2008 Prospect Park police murders
The 2008 Prospect Park police murders occurred in early summer of 2008 in the neighborhood of Prospect Park in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. 45-year-old police detective Clark Ambrose and 36-year-old officer Gerald Harper, both of the New York Police Department (NYPD), were killed in the front seats of their police cruiser, which swerved to the left and hit a wall that enclosed the boundaries of the park. A few suspects were apprehended by the NYPD in the following days. Events At approximately 00:20 (12:20 AM) on a Thursday in the early summer of 2008, two Brooklyn police officers of the New York Police Department - 45-year-old detective Clark Ambrose and 36-year-old officer Gerald Harper - were on a routine patrol on Oneida Avenue in the New York City neighborhood of Prospect Park. At around that time, they were gunned down outside of a TW@ Internet Cafe by a gunman that used an MP10 Filipino-made submachine gun (a variant of the common MP5). It is assumed that Ambrose, who was in the front passenger seat, died instantly. However, Harper either subconsciously or purposefully drove the car to the left, away from the right sidewalk near the cafe. The car crashed into a wall that marked the boundary of Prospect Park, with the front window filled with bullet holes and cracked glass with spots of blood surrounding the bullet holes. The two bodies were found on the sidewalk, apparently pulled out of the car. Police arrived at the scene first, but found no immediate evidence pointing out to a suspect. Emergency services took several tens of minutes to arrive at the scene. At approximately 1:05 AM, Brooklyn cab driver Henry Crane was found dead from a hit-and-run attack, shortly after the murders of the policemen. The NYPD deemed the death of Crane manslaughter, although some NYPD analysts drew a connection between the murder of the police 45 minutes earlier. It was possible that the gunman ran the man down as he escaped from the crime scene, as crime expert John O'Shannon suggested. However, the NYPD were unable to prove that the three murders were connected in any way. In the following days, a few suspects were taken into police custody. Eyewitnesses claimed that the gunman was an adult dark-skinned Hispanic male who spoke with a New York Hispanic accent, which the police took into account while making apprehensions. 46-year-old Sergio Gonzales was taken into custody at 5:00 (AM) on Friday at his apartment in Brighton Beach. He was placed at the scene of the crime, using a computer at the internet cafe at the time. Another suspect, 22-year-old Joseph Gracias of Park Slope, was also questioned on the murders. The NYPD issued a search warrant for his apartment, and they found some e-mails to his friends condemning what he saw as "racial profiling" against Hispanics for street crimes. The evidence was not sufficient enough to make an arrest, however. Public funeral services were held for the two policemen on Saturday at 15:00 (3:00 PM) in the Prospect Park Cemetry, not far from the scene of the murders. Deputy Mayor Bryce Dawkins condemned the act, saying that they were two valued policemen, and he would continue the fight against organized crime in the city. Carl Bates, a spokesman for the Mayor's Office, stated that the Mayor would do all that he could to combat the rise in crime in New York City that had started earlier that year, and sent his condolences to the New York Police Department. Category:Events Category:Murders